The story about the epic of Gilgamesh clearly explains the acquaintance that exists between the Uruk king, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu. The story depicts its main theme as recognizing the mortality of an individual’s life. In the beginning of the story, Gilgamesh intimidates the Uruk people and in return, they constantly pray to Anu their sky god for help. Anu asks Arurun the creation goddess to devise an equally balanced revenge for Gilgamesh leading to the creation of Enkidu a monster who has great strength. In this part of the story, Gilgamesh shows the character of greed for power due to his strange act of intimidating the uruk people. This is familiar to the audience because he is just like most of the current leaders who always fight for power by threatening their people who have less power.
Enkidu and Gilgamesh engage in a brief fight after which they turn out to be great friends. The two pristine friends lived together in the town as they little by little become weak and lethargic until one day when Gilgamesh proposes an escapade that involves chopping down a vast cedar forest. This is in a bid to build a fascinating monument for the gods prior to which, they must murder the forest’s custodian, the terrible Humbaba, which they eventually accomplish. This happens despite the fact that this is against the will of Enkidu and the leaders of the town (Marson, 56). Here, Gilgamesh depicts a strange behavior of self interest as opposed to putting the interest of his people first. He fails to consider the effects of cutting down the forest. This is familiar to today’s audience since their leaders in most cases are also selfish and put their interests first.
Later, the love goddess, Ishtar, admires the body of Gilgamesh as he washes blood of his body and consequently puts forward her willingness to be his wife. Contrary to her expectations, he declines the proposal and even insults her reminding her how they suffered in the past due to her mischevious actions and the fact that she has had a dozen lovers. She is infuriated and goes back to heaven where she requests her father, Anu, to release the heaven bull on Gilgamesh together in addition the city. Anu honors her selfish will and the Uruk people are terrorized. In this instance, Gilgamesh faces marital problems which may be likened to those faced by today’s leaders making the tale familiar to today’s audience.
Enkidu collaborates with Gilgamesh and successfully manage to eliminate the powerful bull. Enkidu gets a strange dream that the council of gods held a meeting dictating that killers of Humbaba and the heavenly bull be disciplined. Following his dream, he dies after twelve days. Gilgamesh starts to fear that he will soon breathe his last just like his counterpart (Marson, 67).Gilgamesh in this instance displays his desire to be a hero where he is afraid of death. He does everything possible to make sure that he remains alive just like many leaders in today’s world would do.
Gilgamesh decides to seek Utnapishtim that is the only way of appeasing the gods in a bid to refrain from mortality. He convinces Utnapishtim to let him know abt the secret of everlasting life and even provides him with an opportunity at eternity. He would achieve this by remaining awake for six days as well as seven consecutive nights. Gilgamesh constantly fails to admit that he was falling asleep. However, Utnapishtim forgives him and gives him a magic plant that would restore his youthfulness. Gilgamesh fails to trust it and decides to move back to Uruk where he planned to carry out a test with it on an elderly man to see if it worked. Unfortunately, as he stops to quench his thirst on a well on his way to Uruk, a snake that senses the pleasantness of that flower grabs it leading to sloughing of its skin (Marson, 78). The main theme and strange character of Gilgamesh is his continuous desire for immortality as well as remaining a hero just as many people, especially powerful leaders in the current world would want to have. He also displays the character of mistrust making him familiar to today’s audience.
Work cited
Marson,H. Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative. Retrieved on 24 January, 2013 from http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=-p55MaIctcYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+epic+of+gilgamesh+summary&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jIUBUdePM8yNrgfng4CIDw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f
